He Steered Drivers In Right Direction Retiree The Oldest In Driver Training

January 30, 1992|by SUSAN TODD, The Morning Call

In his 40 years as a driver education instructor, Allen Hunsicker taught 5,000 people the basics of driving: parallel parking, obeying the speed limit, the difference between the brake pedal and the gas pedal and the fundamentals of steering.

"I loved every minute of it. None of my students ever really scared me to death," said Hunsicker, who was considered the state's oldest driver education instructor when he retired earlier this month.

"I retired because I'm 77," he said.

There were a few frightening moments, though.

Once he was heading into downtown Palmerton from Route 248 with an elderly female student when the woman confused the gas pedal with the brake.

"Your reaction has got to be real fast," Hunsicker said. "That's why I always sat 10 inches closer to the student, not far off to the other side. (In) that split second, I could reach over for the wheel."

Under Pennsylvania law, automobiles used for driver education classes have dual brakes, meaning in an emergency Hunsicker could bring the vehicle to a stop.

"I wouldn't want to teach without dual controls," he said.

Hunsicker started his teaching career in the former one-room Aquashicola School, Lower Towamensing Township.

"In those days," he said, "you taught all subjects to students in eight grades."

When the one-room schools in Aquashicola and Bowmanstown merged with Palmerton to create the Palmerton Area School District in 1947, Hunsicker began teaching at Palmerton High School. In 1952, he became one of the school's two instructors in driver education.

He taught students at the high school to drive until he retired in 1975, then he continued offering driving lessons through his own business.

He also sold motorcycles and bicycles. He sold his Harley Davidson motorcycle dealership a few years back, but still operates a bicycle store -- stocked with at least 200 new bicycles --in a shop adjoining his home in Aquashicola.

"None of my students ever hit another car. That's a pretty darn good record," he said.

Hunsicker said some instructors, after several mishaps with student drivers, became so frazzled they called it quits and stuck to classroom instruction.

"I didn't really have too many bad ones," Hunsicker said. "Probably, the worst student I had had 40 hours of behind-the-wheel. Most of the students had eight. The state required six hours."

Eighty-five percent of the students under his instruction passed their driver tests the first time, he said.

"Usually, the elderly people failed once or twice," he added.

Hunsicker said most students enrolled in his private lessons because there was no one else to take them out to practice driving.

"I got a lot of students, for that reason, their parents were scared to death. They didn't want to wreck their cars. Adults, the same thing. The student would scare the life out of their husband," he said.

The prospect of a car accident with one of his students never caused Hunsicker to worry.

He figured if he had managed to muster up enough guts to ride down the street without holding onto the handlebars of a motorcycle when he was a teen-ager, he could handle being in the same car with a student driver without working up a sweat.

Another secret, he said, was in keeping constantly alert. He recalled how one young man did a fine job of entering a curve, but then turned the steering wheel too hard inside the curve, nearly sending the car veering off the road.

"You had to stay 100 percent alert," Hunsicker said. "There was no time for looking around and watching the scenery."

That wasn't the most difficult part of being an instructor. The most difficult thing in the career of an instructor -- you guessed it -- was teaching parallel parking.

"It was the hardest thing to teach a person, regardless of age," he said.